


what we both need

by huphilpuffs



Series: flares verse [2]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Disability, M/M, Pride, fibromyalgia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-27 18:29:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15030698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/huphilpuffs/pseuds/huphilpuffs
Summary: Dan's disability keeps him from going to pride.





	what we both need

**Author's Note:**

> this takes place in the same verse as [ flares ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14259522/chapters/32887281) but if you haven't read that, all you really need to know is that dan has fibromyalgia.

The bitterness comes the moment Dan cracks his eyes open to a bedroom painted in afternoon sunlight.

It’s been there for weeks, a nauseating burn in his stomach, a painful weight on his chest, layered beneath fruitless hope, the desperate kind that Dan knew would result in nothing, but could never erase entirely. That maybe, just maybe, this time his body would cooperate. Maybe he’d feel good. 

Maybe the fibromyalgia would leave his brain alone for just one day.

But his arms ache with a phantom sunburn and his eyes sting from the summer sun and Dan rolls over, presses his face into his pillow, and cries until his ribs ache too much to breathe.

\---

Crawling out of bed is hard. 

The duvet is too bright and the room is too happy and Dan wants nothing more than to bury himself in his biggest hoodie and pretend the world doesn’t exist. Just for a day, so his brain doesn’t need to remember what he’s missing out on. 

But it’s July and his body already can’t handle the heat.

He wears a singlet instead, so no fabric grates over the burning nerves of his upper arms. He stays in his pants because it’s been a long time since he’s needed to wear trousers at home.

Even though his chest goes tight with sadness, he drags himself out of the bedroom and tries to face the day.

\---

Phil intercepts him in the hallway. 

He’s wearing a button down and shorts and a smile far too happy. Dan sinks into the hand that wraps around his hip, the fingers that slide into his hair. 

“How are you feeling?” asks Phil, just before pressing a soft kiss to Dan’s lips.

He shrugs in response, humming against the pain in his chest.

Phil squeezes his hip. “I have something for you.”

His hand slides into Dan’s, tugs him gently towards the lounge. Dan’s breath hitches at the sight, and sputters when the spasm of his chest muscles makes him choke.

“Is it okay?” says Phil. 

And as soon as Dan stops coughing, Phil presses a kiss to the round of his shoulder.

\---

Dan settles on the sofa with a sigh, stares at the room around him. 

Phil replaced their makeshift blanket curtains with a pair of not-quite-opaque rainbow flags. There’s smoothies sitting on the coffee table, that Dan’s certain Phil didn’t make himself, layered in the colours of the rainbow. The breakfast bar is littered with little things Dan can’t see, and Mario Kart lights up the telly.

“Is it too much?” asks Phil. 

It’s a lot, Dan thinks. Bright and colourful and exuberant. He shakes his head, reaching out to tug Phil onto the sofa with him.

“I love you,” he says. 

Phil’s smile goes broad and happy. He kisses Dan again.

It’s a lot, but it feels like pride.

\---

Dan ends up changing into a new singlet, this one made of mesh. He pulls on a pair of shorts and sits back down on the sofa where his outfit doesn’t matter. 

Except it feels like it matters. Everything about today suddenly feels like it matters. 

Phil pins a rainbow to the collar of his shirt. He smiles like it matters to him, too. Like this is actually a suitable alternative to the parade full of colours and community that marches through the city too many stories beneath their feet. 

Pain twists in Dan’s chest. He wishes he could be there, could walk through city streets surrounded by happy, proud people. Just for a few steps. That would be enough, if only his body would let him drag himself there. 

If only he wasn’t so broken. 

He blinks the thought away.

The sadness lingers, but when Dan smiles around his smoothie’s swirly straw, it doesn’t feel forced.

\---

The rainbow curtains paint the lounge is stripes of faded colours. 

Dan’s head is tilted back against the sofa. He stares at where translucent orange bleeds into red and yellow, and a smile draws at the corners of his mouth.

Phil’s fingers tap at his jaw. “Don’t move.”

“Sorry,” says Dan, but he’s still smiling. 

Phil giggles. The wet paint brush he’s holding shakes against Dan’s cheek, leaving lines Dan knows will squiggle. But it’ll be good, he thinks. 

It’ll be great.

Phil pulls back. “All done.”

Dan grabs his phone, pulls up the camera to see Phil’s work. The flag isn’t straight, the colours a little mixed. But he can’t help but smile, take a poorly-lit, awkward-angled picture of himself.

And then he reaches out, drags Phil forward to press a clumsy kiss to the corner of his mouth.

He takes a picture of that, too, just for them. 

Part of him wishes it wasn’t a sofa he was sitting on, wasn’t an empty wall behind him, but, still, he smiles.

It’s a snapshot of their tiny slice of pride. 

\---

Twitter is full of photos of people who are actually  _ there.  _

For a moment, the sadness returns, as Dan stares at pictures of couples sharing kisses on public streets, surrounded by colours and flags and support and joy. The face paint’s gone dry on his cheek and the mesh shirt feels a little awkward over his body, and the urge to curl up and ignore it stabs painfully behind his eyes. 

Phil takes his phone when the first tear falls.

“It’s not fair,” Dan mumbles.

“I know,” says Phil. “Next year, we’ll figure it out, okay? Even if we can only go for a little bit.”

Dan nods. But the sadness stays, sending another tear rolling down his cheek. Phil reaches for him, draws him in and holds Dan to his chest until his breathing evens out.

Until he can stares at the rainbow flags hanging over their windows and see stripes instead of teary swirls.

“Thank you,” says Dan.

Phil just kisses the top of his head.

\---

The world quiets down in the evening.

Inside, the flat’s gone darker. They order rainbowless pizza for dinner and sit on the sofa. The rainbow on Dan’s cheek is smeared just a little from his tears and Phil’s rainbow pin is sitting on the coffee table now because it was bothering him.

Phil hands him a Wii remote. His smile is a little too wide as he selects a race. 

Dan’s laugh stabs between his ribs, echoes happily through the lounge. “I don’t think Rainbow Road is how most people celebrate pride, Phil.”

But they play it once, and then again when Phil whines about how he didn’t win. 

The sun has fallen. The rainbow flags still hang from the windows. Their empty smoothie glasses and half-eaten pizza linger on the coffee table.

Dan kisses the pout off Phil’s lips when he comes in second again.

The rainbow Phil painted on his cheek goes smudged when Phil reaches up, cradles his face and kiss him again. 


End file.
